The White House backed up a misleading statement issued by Donald Trump Jr. about his meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, saying Monday the president weighed in 'as a father' to help craft it.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushed back on a report that the president personally dictated the statement – but made no effort to deny that he participated in its crafting – before going on a long harangue about the media's constant focus on the Russia story.

It also contradicted a June statement by the president's attorney that he played no role in the creation of the statement.

'The statement that Don Jr. issued is true. There’s no inaccuracy in the statement,' she said. 'The president weighed in as any father would based on the limited information that he had.'

President Trump dictated his son Donald Trump Jr.'s misleading statement on the nature of his meeting with a Kremlin lawyer, it has been claimed

Asked about a report that Trump dictated the statement, Sanders – who said she didn't participate in the crafting of the statement – said: 'He certainly didn't dictate, but, you know, like I said, he weighed in, offered suggestion like any father would do.'

The Washington Post reported that the president dictated a misleading statement issued by Donald Trump Jr. about his ill-fated meeting with Russian lawyers last year, reporting that it was the president who told Donald Jr. to claim in his statement that the subject of the June 2016 meeting was the ban on US adoptions in Russia.

According to the report, Donald Jr. and people he sought advice from wanted to come clean and admit that the premise of the meeting was for him to receive campaign dirt on his father's election opponent Hillary Clinton.

The latest White House take diverges from a July statement by Trump's lawyer, Jay Sekulow.

Sekulow told NBC's 'Meet the Press' on July 16: 'I do want to be clear ― the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement,' he said.

US President Donald Trump attends a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 31, 2017

President Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow denied that President Trump was involved in the drafting of a statement by Donald Trump Jr. about Trump Jr.'s June meeting with Russians

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S. August 1, 2017

Sanders said there were 'no inaccuracies' in Trump Jr.'s statement - which stated that participants 'primarily discussed' a program about adoption of Russian children.

What the statement didn't say is that it got set up after the promise of dirt on Hillary Clinton, after an approach by a music publicist who claimed Russian government support for Donald Trump.

Sources who are familiar with the matter said the president intervened and told his son to claim that he took the meeting innocently and to tell The New York Times it was 'not a campaign issue at the time,' according to the Post.

Trump allegedly gave the instruction before flying back from the G-20 summit on July 8.

According to the Post, the president's lawyers, lawyers working for Jared Kushner and senior White House aides including Hope Hicks, deliberated about how to handle the story as more requests for information about the meeting came to them.

They reportedly decided on a transparent approach and, sources said, Kushner's team even advocated sharing the email chain that Donald Jr. would later reveal.

THE STATEMENT

'It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.

'I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.'

They were 'overruled' by the president, as the Post puts it, when The New York Times approached the administration on the story and Donald Jr.'s statement claiming the meeting was about adoptions, was sent out.

A member of the president's legal team denied the claims on Monday night.

'Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent,' attorney Jay Sekulow said in a statement.

On July 11, Donald Jr. was ultimately forced to reveal the meeting's true nature by posting the email chain which led up to it on Twitter in a bid to beat other newspapers to the punch.

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His father has since defended the move, saying that 'anyone in politics would have taken the meeting'.

He later characterized Donald Jr. as a 'wonderful young man' and a 'good boy'.

Donald Jr. has admitted that in retrospect, he would have thought twice about taking the meeting.

In an interview with Sean Hannity, he said: 'In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently.

'Again, this is before the Russia mania. This is before they were building it up in the press. For me, this was opposition research. They had something, you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I'd been hearing about, but were probably under-reported for, you know, years; not just during the campaign.

'So I think I wanted to hear it out. But really, it went nowhere and it was apparent that that wasn't what the meeting was actually about.'

British PR executive Rob Goldstone orchestrated the meeting which was attended by Russian lawyer Natasha Veselnitskaya

The meeting's significance in relation to the ongoing probe into Trump's campaign team's ties with Russia is yet to be determined.

The meeting has however dominated conversation on the subject and appears to have haunted other members of the administration.

Jared Kushner, Donald Jr's brother-in-law who was present at the meeting, issued his own statement earlier this month describing his experience of it.

Kushner, who is one of the president's most senior advisers, painted it, like the rest of the Trumps, as an innocent meeting that was held in good faith.

The get-together took place at Trump Tower last June.

It was orchestrated by British PR executive Rob Goldstone and attended by Russian lawyer Natasha Veselnitskaya.

Jared Kushner was also present for part of it and was with the president at the G-20 summit

After she vouched for the accuracy of Donald Trump Jr.'s statement, Sanders went after the media for pushing a 'false narrative' about a 'phony scandal,' then went after Bill and Hillary Clinton.

'I think the bigger question is, everybody wants to try to make this some story about misleading, the only thing I've seen misleading is the year's worth of stories that have been fueling a false narrative about this Russia collusion and ... a phony scandal based on anonymous sources. And I think that is, if we're going to talk about misleading, that is the only thing misleading I see in this entire process,' she said.

'You guys are focused on a meeting that Don Jr had with no consequence when the Democrats actually colluded with a foreign government, like Ukraine, the Democrat-linked firm Fusion GPS actually took money from the Russian government while it created a phony dossier that's been the basis for all of the Russia scandal fake news and if you want to talk further about a relationship with Russia, look no further then the Clintons as we've said time and time again. Bill Clinton was paid half a million dollars to give a speech to a Russian bank and was personally thanked by Vladimir Putin for it. Hillary Clinton allowed one-firth of America's uranium reserve to be sold to a Russian firm whose investors were Clinton Foundation donors. And the Clinton campaign chairman's brother lobbied against sanctions on Russia's largest bank and failed to report it,' she said, bringing together a string of Russia stories.

Her attack glossed over some of the nuance of various Russia reports. For example, a witness at a Senate hearing probing foreign registration said that research firm Fusion GPS took Russian government to push against the Magnitsky Act, but did not say that Russia paid for the partially discredited dossier of dirt on Donald Trump.

'If you want to talk about someone who's actually been tough on Russia, look at President Trump. He wants more fracking, more coal, more energy, a stronger military, a stronger defense, those things aren't good for Russia. I think the distinctions are very clear and you guys want to create a narrative that just doesn't exist,' she said.